


pretty girls don't know the things that i know

by ceserabeau



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Blood Magic, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Post-Nogitsune, Resurrection, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 13:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12343713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceserabeau/pseuds/ceserabeau
Summary: “I’ll bring her back,” you tell them.





	pretty girls don't know the things that i know

At the time, you think the first night is the worst.

A mugging, the deputies say as the ambulance takes her away, lights flashing, sirens blaring: too late, too late.

“I want to go with her,” you say over the sound of Scott’s sobs, Isaac’s hitching breath.

“You should go home,” the Sherriff says, fingers against the red stain on your sleeve. “You need to change. You’ve got – you should change.”

You can’t, you won’t. There’s so little of her left and you want this, want these specks of her blood to seep through your skin into your bones so you can lock her away inside you. Keep her forever.

“Lydia,” he says, so soft it hurts, and you can’t look at him, can’t tear your eyes away from the pool of red in the dirt, “It’s not your fault.”

It echoes through you, vibrates along your skull. How can you put into words that she did it for you, she died for you because she was Allison, an Argent, protector of the weak and the innocent and you are neither of those things but she fell on the sword for you anyway.

There’s a familiar buzz at the base of your skull: a scream building, and you choke on it. You’re a banshee, you’d scream for anyone - but she isn’t anyone: she’s Allison, was Allison, your Allison.

You never thought you’d scream for her.

 

 

“I’ll bring her back,” you tell them.

It’s raining as the mourners trickle away from the cemetery and the earth is damp and cold beneath your fingers. There’s no headstone yet, just the stark darkness of tilled soil against the grass. Somewhere, down below the worms and rocks and dirt, Allison lies sleeping, waiting for you.

“Lydia,” Scott says, and his hand lands heavy on your shoulder. He sounds raw, stripped to the bone, like seeing her in the casket, young and perfect, has flayed him open. “You can’t.”

You dig your fingers in, feel the grittiness, the way the stones catch on your nails. Can’t, you think, isn’t a word for people like you.

You turn your head up to him, and bare your teeth, more wild than he’ll ever be. “Watch me.”

 

 

Chris at the door, eyes wide and pleading: “Scott told me – you can’t. Lydia, she’s gone, she died for – I can’t let you just –”

Your blood burns, boils. He would let his daughter rot in the ground, dirt in her mouth, insects eating her flesh, body decaying, dissolving, until she’s unrecognisable, until there’s nothing left but a headstone.

“She went there to save you,” Chris snaps. “She _died_ to save you.” His hand is on your wrist, tight enough to bruise. “Promise me you won’t. For her.”

His eyes are bright with tears, hollow with grief, and once upon a time you would have felt sympathy, empathy, this is Allison’s father, but there is grief and then there is your grief. It is all-consuming, all-destroying. You’d burn the world, salt the earth, let it all rot if it would – could – might bring her back.

“I can’t promise you that,” you say. “For her.”

 

 

It doesn’t work.

The magic is right: mountain ash and sacred herbs, mixed with blood, your blood, the right spell, the right moon cycle – but there’s nothing.

You tear at the earth until your fingers are bloody and raw. Stamp your feet until the ground shakes beneath them. Scream and scream and scream, until there’s nothing left, your voice cracking in your throat, copper in your mouth.

Still nothing.

You stare at the grave, moonlight on the headstone. How deep is she? If you plunged your hands through the soil, could you reach her? Could you pull her out with your own hands?

But then, if you reached out with these hands, layer upon layer of blood and mud and guilt, etched in the creases, sunk deep into the bones, would she even reach back?

 

 

“What can I help you with, Lydia?” Peter asks, his tone sweet and knowing.

You're too angry, too tired, too scared for this. Your body is exhausted beyond belief, your eyes sunk hollow in your skull. Your dreams are nightmares, twisted, cruel, and you wake screaming, clawing the bedsheets apart, blood bursting in your mouth. You don’t have time for Peter Hale’s games today.

“Tell me how to do it.”

He doesn’t even ask what you mean, just smiles, sickly and sickening. “It’ll hurt. You won’t be the same after.”

You straighten your spine, feel the silver steel there, forged by Allison’s hands the way she forged her arrows. “That’s not what I asked. Tell me how to do it.”

“It might not work,” Peter says. “It might kill you. Do you understand? Is an Argent really worth your life?”

The answer will never be anything but yes.

 

                                   

A worm moon over the cemetery tonight, and Peter watches you, impassive, as you scream and squirm in the dirt. Blood and bone and breath, pushed down down down into the ground, all the way to her, and still nothing. Still she sleeps.

“I told you,” Peter says.

There’s pity in his eyes and it makes you spit and swear. Why could you bring him back and not her? How could his soul, that black and twisted thing, ever be worth more than hers?

Peter slowly taps his nail against the headstone. “Lydia,” he says, “Sometimes people can’t come back. Sometimes they don’t want to. Did you think about that?”

You rest your head against the ground and imagine you can smell her perfume seeping up through the soil. “It wasn’t her time.”

“That’s got nothing to do with it.” Peter’s nails clatter against the stone again. “Death is death.”

“But you –”

“I had a plan in place. I was prepared to come back. She wasn’t.”

She might not have been prepared, but you are now. You’ll do whatever it takes. Bleed yourself dry, scream yourself hoarse; dig her out with your bare hands if you have to, your nails splintered and your fingertips raw.

She might’ve dragged you kicking and screaming into this new world, but you knew from that first moment, when she smiled at you, tiny white teeth flashing, that you would do anything for her.

Getting your hands dirty is the smallest price to pay.

 

 

You count the days until someone realises: in the end it’s Stiles, your skinny, pretty Stiles, following the thread that ties you together, hearing the echoes of your screams.

You watch him watching you. He’s pale in the circle of light from your laptop; he looks hollowed out, gutted, a mirror image of yourself. You don’t have to ask if the demons keep him up at night too.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” he asks.

You do – and you don’t.

You know the magic, how to slice your palm, the words to chant. You’ve scoured every text and tome, books upon books. You hold the pages in place with knives, her knives, and they gleam in the light the way her eyes gleamed when she –

“ _Lydia_ ,” Stiles snaps. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

You hold out a hand. “Pass me that book.”

He passes it to you, and his hands are shaking, knuckled clenched around the cover like he wants to rip it apart. You want to, you will, if it doesn’t give you the information you need.

“Resurrection is – it’s dangerous, Lydia.” Stiles takes a shaking breath, and you hear his bones rattle with it. “It can kill you.”

You look at him: his dark eyes, his hollow cheeks, bitten lips and nails, body vanishing beneath his clothes. Another broken thing you can’t fix. You don’t care anymore – you can’t care. You can’t think about him or anyone else. There’s only space for her.

“Help me,” you say, “Or get the fuck out.”

 

 

Third time’s the charm, and the cemetery is crowded. This was about Allison and you, but when you screamed for her, howled for her, it was your pack that howled back.

“This is insane,” Scott is saying, eyes flashing at you, not quite the same shade as Allison’s blood. “You said you wouldn’t –”

“I never said that.”

“She’s dead,” Isaac spits. “Nothing's going to bring her back.”

You knew this would happen: they wouldn’t listen, they wouldn’t let you, and you’d kill them if you thought it was the answer, kill them all, slit their throats, soak the earth with their blood, burn their bodies, paints your face with their ashes because she was everything – she _is_ everything.

The only thing keeping them at bay is Stiles and his shaking hands, his tight jaw: “Just let her,” he says as you touch Allison’s headstone, pale fingers against pale stone, “Don’t get in her way.”

So they watch, eyes on you, not lifting a finger. Allison is worth more than their apathy, more than their blank faces and silent mouths, so you open your veins for her again, pour your heart and soul into your screams.

Malia tilts her head, eyes on the grave, the headstone in the moonlight. “Nothing’s happening.”

She’s right: nothing, no hand reaching up through the dirt, no heartbeat below ground. You got it wrong again, bled and burned for nothing. How many more spells must you say? How much more blood must you spill? A body’s worth: yours or someone else’s, enough that it soaks through to her. But it’s not enough. It might never be enough.

 _Don’t get in her way_ , Stiles said, but Scott is in your way now, pulling you back, away from her.  

“I have to –”

“No,” and Scott’s voice reverberates through you, commanding, your alpha demanding you submit. “No more, Lydia. It’s over.”

You would scream but there’s nothing left to scream for. You’re a banshee, a harbinger. You see death, you know it, you cradle it to your chest and whisper sweet nothings in its ear.

You were never made to breathe life into corpses.

 

 

Scott in your kitchen, sitting at the table: “Tell me you won’t do it again.”

You can’t make that promise. Hope still hides in a desperate corner of your heart, wondering, waiting. There will always be a _what if_.

“I loved her,” you tell him as you sit opposite. “I can’t let her go.”

“We all loved her.” He touches your arm, an attempt at comfort. “I know it’s hard.”

You could laugh if you didn’t think you’d choke on it. Scott McCall thinks his heart is broken, but Allison was your friend, your sister, your everything. She touched you so gently, so tenderly, and your heart opened to her like a flower in the sun. And now there’s a hole, a dark aching hole where she used to be, like someone cut you open, ran your through with a sword and clawed her out –

“No, Scott.” You shake him off. “I _loved_ her.”

Your voice is trembling and your hands are trembling and the whole world will tremble before you if you can’t – you can’t –

“Lydia,” Scott says and his tone is too soft, too gentle; “She’s not coming back.”

You know what he’s asking you to do: stitch up your wounds, repaint your face, drag yourself forward, because that’s what people do. It’s what she’d want you to go.

But the hole in your chest is too big, you face too wet with tears, your body too heavy with the weight of grief.

Moving on is for people who didn’t die too.

**Author's Note:**

> As if Lydia didn’t bleed herself dry trying to bring Allison back


End file.
